switching over to iPhoto 09 - import question

[jeff-d]

i have ~150 gigs of pics on my system that were imported through the canon software. having just upgraded to iPhoto 09 i would like to add these pics. however, when i try to do this iPhoto seems to create a copy of the pic when trying to import.

question 1 - is this correct? is a copy created when you import to iPhoto from a file on the current hard drive?

if so - t would seem the only way to do import all of the pics would be to erase them from my iMac's hdd and import hem from an external drive. or can i simply create an iPhoto album by linking to their existing location?

thanks in advance for the help.

 

[Richard1028]

Go to Preferences-->Advanced.

Turn off the option to copy photos to iPhoto's library.

Edit: I just reread your post. iPhoto 09 has the new "faces" feature and with 150gb in pics it will drive you nuts. After you import a photo, the faces feature will scan each pic looking for well... a face. With a photo collection your size iPhoto will take days to scan each pic and there's no way to turn it off. Because of this (and for other reasons) I'm guessing iPhoto's Library will still grow to about 15-20gb even though you're not importing the actual pic. Of course I don't know how many pics you have. I think iPhoto has a 250k limit.

I like iPhoto but dumped it. It's just gotten too bloated.